


What We Fight For

by StainedGlassDreams



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: BuckyNat Secret Santa, Civil War, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 10:07:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5662369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StainedGlassDreams/pseuds/StainedGlassDreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What you learn slowly, the bitter pill you eventually swallow; is that not everything is black and white. Not everything is pardonable. And allegiance, it isnt that simple either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MedeaV](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MedeaV/gifts).



> For medeafive, and the prompt "Bucky gets captured during Civil War by the pro-reg side and Nat comes to interrogate him  
> rather without their shared history, but if you want to include it, why the hell not"
> 
> Hope you enjoy it! :)

Tony watched him in the room, his face attempting to hide his pain.

A truth he learned a little too late into the game: You don't get justice.  
You give it, like a scholarship, or a cure for disease, reap a reward that you wouldn't want anyway.  
But you, as a so singular human being, don't get such a bountiful honor.

You don't get to find peace at night, alone in a bed that, if God finds you pardonabale enough, you get to share with someone who gives a crap enough to help you back to sleep when the sheets are replaced by the never ending guilt.  
You don't get to rest, with new scum every 5 damn minutes.  
You don't get to not have enemies. You don't get to keep your friends in this fight to undo wrongs.

You don't get to have justice for the murder of your parents.

Barnes sat below, apparently tiring himself out enough to do it.

So why, when out of all the shitstorms he endured, the one justice he can have, feels like he's doing the wrong thing?

"Sir? Agent Romanoff is here."  
"Let her in."

Natasha walked into the room, the purposeful steps slowly turning into slow ones, as she approached the cameras.  
".....What is this?"  
"Short straw." He handed the dossier to her, as she looked at it. "Ross assigned you interrogation."  
She looked at it, before looking back at Tony. "You can't tell me something doesn't feel right." She said.  
Stayed quiet. "We're doing our job."  
"Putting me on interrogation, and you after Rogers' best friend."  
"He's a fugitive. We apprehended him."  
"With a plan that even Fury wouldn't have approved."  
"He killed my parents!" He tried to not yell, failing miserably.  
"Then I should've been shot on sight. Not rescued."  
"He doesn't get a pardon." Stayed silent.  
"Then neither should you." She grabbed the dossier, leaving.

The staff in the room maintained their quiet.

You don't get justice.

They might as well have agreed she was right.

Or maybe, order in the chaos, was just another evil he just swallowed.


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha read the file, out of habit, not in any stretch because she wanted to.

The dossier held the same amount of information as what she gave Steve, only, without the truth.

Or mercy.

The parts of his torture were excluded, as well as his POW status in HYDRA and the Soviets.  
Hell, if she reall wanted to be nitpicky (as whoever put this together should have damn well had), his service in the SSR was dumbed down, leaving him "Low-grade member of The Howling Commados; sniper. Presumed KIA in mission."  
She wasn't as big a fan of Captain America as say Coulson was, but she knew the man behind the title. the one that blinded, and shimmered, like the real America he so wanted to do right by.  
She knew Barnes. That his rescue by Steve was essential. That Col. Phillips wouldn't have gone after the other HYDRA bases without the commandos. Who, at the time, were all locked away in the Austrian base he liberated them from. & rescued whatever was left of Bucky Barnes.

Sighed as she tried to drink something, the liquid tasting foul in her mouth. A mirror of what she was reading.

The masked lie that Bucky was killed "on a mission".  
Not stating it to be the apprehension & capture of Arnim Zola. And that Barnes died protecting Rogers (a report she dredged up during the Avengers initial formation. Broke her heart then. Breaks it again now.)

She fought the urge to throw the damn thing in the garbage, manila colors only further decimating her hope.  
Fought the sick feeling that she may have once again, chosen the wrong side.

Breathed in deeply.

The initial Accords were right, Rogers protest of it, both obvious and expected.  
In her head.... It only ever made sense. Too much destruction, lives that couldn't be saved. There needed to be a price for them.

Her heart... It was always a different thing.  
Her heart knew one truth, and one truth alone. One nailed in even more with this failure of a file written by Ross, and might as well have been, arguably, written by Director Pierce.  
If tables were turned, and she was captured now, under the Accords; if she was in that, even by SHIELD standard, inhumane cell, and her crimes included, while her mercies, left out... She would be killed.

Held the dossier in her left hand.

And though she didn't know Barnes (the scar on her stomach protesting, while her memories showed her crimes under the Red Room just as worse), she couldn't shake the feeling that he would let it happen.  
....Couldn't shake the feeling Rogers would either.

She threw the file into the shredding pile, as she walked toward the cell.

There are revelations in Short straws. And for once, since this mess started, she actually Thanked General Ross.


	3. Chapter 3

She descended down, past clearance and into the room he was being kept in.

Barnes was still, his breaths ragged through his movements.  
Heard he was pounding on the cell incessantly, trying whatever method he could to break it. The harsh & cold truth being if Stark wanted you there, there you'd stay.  
Or, more accurately, if Ross did.

She walked a little closer up, Barnes still quiet.

"I wish this could have been another way."  
Barnes raised his head slightly, looking at Natasha. His face showing the extent of his fatigue, as if he hadn't slept in weeks.  
His expression went from angered, to searching, and then hidden pain.

So he hadn't gotten his full memories back.

"....You remember me."  
He continued his distant stare, before looking back down.  
"...What else do you remember?" She asked, maintaining sickening, & led on loyalty for the cameras.  
He remained quiet.  
Hated herself for this. But it was the only way, this whole recording being out on record for military trial, in front of 4 witnesses, in addition to Gyrich & Stark.  
"....The Red Room days? Being a POW in Soviet custody?"  
Barnes controlled his breathing. Hated herself even more.  
"What about when Rogers broke through your conditioning, that was done by a former SHIELD head?"  
Her comms systems buzzed to life "Agent Romanoff, I'm asking you to use another interrogation tactic, you are releasing classified information."  
"And how you've been on the run because since Austria-"

"Stop." Barnes spoke, coming out as a near whisper. "....Please." the last word, hinging on heart shattering.  
She waited, contemplating how to help. "....Do you remember where you were during the UN explosion?"  
"I didn't do that." He replied, his voice again, barely audible.  
"Then where were you?"

More silence.

"....I know this is personal." He finally said, the words echoing through the room. He slowly looked up to the 2 Way observation windows above. "& I'm sorry." Barnes' face drenched in guilt & memory. Looked back down. "....But I wasn't at the UN." Barnes' gaze turned cold and pained. "That, I remember."

& somehow, understanding.  
Her scar felt it was toward it, as well.

Natasha began to walk away, deserving the hatred, & taking it. Hoping if Rogers couldn't make it here, and push came to sickening shove, this would help.  
She stopped before she reached the door. "....I am sorry."

On that note, she left. Reminded that it isn't just "justice" they fight for.  
It's truth.

And without it, there is no accountability that could be trusted.


End file.
